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The Masque of Africa
Series: Picador Collection
Brief Description
Compelling, insightful, often sombrely beautiful — The Sunday Telegraph Moving beyond travelogue, V.S. Naipaul's The Masque of Africa considers the effects of belief—in indigenous animisms, the foreign religions of Christianity and Islam, the cults of leaders, and mythical history—upon the progress of African civilisation. Beginning in...
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Format: Paperback / softback
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An astonishingly prescient, beautifully written and deeply humane work of non-fiction from one of the greatest travel writers oft the twentieth century
An astonishingly prescient, beautifully written and deeply humane meditation on belief from the late Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul, republished into the Picador Collection. ?????? Now part of the Picador Collection
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Description
Compelling, insightful, often sombrely beautiful — The Sunday Telegraph
Moving beyond travelogue, V.S. Naipaul's The Masque of Africa considers the effects of belief—in indigenous animisms, the foreign religions of Christianity and Islam, the cults of leaders, and mythical history—upon the progress of African civilisation. Beginning in Uganda, at the continent's centre, Naipaul's journey takes in Ghana and Nigeria, the Ivory Coast and Gabon, and ends, as the continent does, in South Africa.
Focusing on the theme of belief, Naipaul examines the fragile but enduring quality of the old world of magic. To witness the ubiquity of such ancient ritual, to be given some idea of its power, was to be taken far back to the beginning of things. To reach that beginning was the purpose of this book.
Now part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.
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Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781035061730
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 02 October 2025
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Picador
Edition: 2nd edition
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 21.0mm
Width: 132.0mm
Height: 200.0mm
Weight: 228g
Pages: 336
About the Author
V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He came to England on a scholarship in 1950. He spent four years at University College, Oxford, and began to write, in London, in 1954. He pursued no other profession. His novels include A House for Mr Biswas, The Mimic Men, Guerrillas, A Bend in the River, and The Enigma of Arrival. In 1971 he was awarded the Booker Prize for In a Free State. His works of non-fiction, equally acclaimed, include Among the Believers, Beyond Belief, The Masque of Africa, and a trio of books about India: An Area of Darkness, India: A Wounded Civilization and India: A Million Mutinies Now. In 1990, V.S. Naipaul received a knighthood for services to literature; in 1993, he was the first recipient of the David Cohen British Literature Prize. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001. He lived with his wife Nadira and cat Augustus in Wiltshire, and died in 2018.
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